This elegantly written book examines the evolution of satirical writing in the long eighteenth century--from Swift and Pope to Byron, Shelley, and Austen--and the social and cultural changes that conditioned it. "Rawson is himself an Augustan among critics, expressing worlds of scholarship with a pungent and delightful humanism."--Donald Lyons, New Criterion
"A luxuriant hybrid of keen literary criticism and well-documented cultural history. . . . This ranging synthesis of a reeling world is mind-expanding for critics and historians, specialists and generalists."--Kenneth Craven, Scriblerian
"Rawson's book shows that there is considerable life and interest left in relatively traditional literary history."--Charles A. Knight, Eighteenth-Century Studies
"Rawson marshals an army of erudite references from Statius to Mailer to illuminate the major figures: Swift, Pope, Burke, Byron, and Shelley. His conversational style is wide-ranging in the best Augustan essay-mode."--Laura L. Runge, Albion
